Dental researcher joins Peninsula

on 29 July 2013

Plymouth University Peninsula Schools of Medicine and Dentistry has made a significant investment in the depth and reach of its dental research with the appointment of internationally recognised dental researcher, Dr Bing Hu, to the post of associate professor in Oral and Dental Health Research.

Dr Hu, who is also an external expert at the School of Dentistry, University of Geneva, joins Plymouth University Peninsula Schools of Medicine and Dentistry from the University of Lausanne.

Dr Hu started his dental study in 1992 and received a Bachelor of Dentistry degree in 1997 at the Capital Medical University in Beijing, China.

In the same school, he was then selected for a three-year study towards specialist of orthodontics.

He then received his Master of Orthodontic/Doctor of Dental Surgery degree in 2000 and became one of the first licensed orthodontists in China. In addition, his Master Degree’s achievement – an Orthodontic Department Information Management and Cephalometric Imaging processing software system- was awarded the Year 2000 Science & Technology Awards of Beijing City.

In 2001, Dr Hu began his doctorate study through a joint programme between his university in Beijing and the University of Strasbourg in France. He then received an MD degree (Orthodontics, instructed by Professor Songlin Wang) in 2004 and PhD degree (Developmental Biology/Molecular and Cell Biology, instructed by Professor Herve Lesot) in 2006.

His doctoral studies focus on tooth development and tissue engineering.

These have led to a number of prestige publications in dental research journals.

He received the William J. Gies Awards of 2006 (the most important prize in dental research, awarded by the International Association of Dental Research) and The Cover of the Year Award for Journal of Dental Research.

Furthermore, his doctorate study has been recognised by different organizations and received various prizes including the 2010 State National Science & Technology Awards, Grade II (China, the highest level scientific award in China).

In 2006, Dr Hu decided to change his research field to gain more knowledge and techniques of molecular biology. He started his postdoctoral study with Professor Gian Paolo Dotto (University of Lausanne, Switzerland, and Harvard University, US).

He was promoted to university lecturer at the University of Lausanne in 2009.

His research has focused on hair development and skin cancer. His work in this field has been published in Cell, and Genes & Development and received comments from Cell and Nature Reviews of Cancer.

To date, Dr Hu has published 15 research papers published in Cell, Nature Cell Biology, Genes & Development, Science, Cell Death & Differentiation and others, with a total impact factor of more than 150 and citations more than 450.

Importantly, by joining Plymouth University Peninsula Schools of Medicine and Dentistry, Dr Hu has recently received the Marie Curie Career Integration grant from the European Research Council. His future research interests in Plymouth will cover two major areas: oral cancer and stem cells; and craniofacial development and tissue engineering.

Professor David Moles, director of Postgraduate Dental Education and Research at Plymouth University Peninsula Schools of Medicine and Dentistry, commented: 'We are delighted to welcome Bing to our growing research team. His experience, skills and expertise are enormously impressive and well-respected and we look forward to working with him to raise the profile of our dental research still further. His appointment is the most recent in a phase of planned development for our research portfolio.'